"You are a stranger to me."
"I trust your feeling towards me changes, for I want my only son to love me."
At this Jack was silent, and instead of looking at the man he looked at Mrs. Ruthven and at Marion. Then, unable to control his feelings, he rushed from the room, mounted the stairs, and burst into his own apartment, where he threw himself on the bed, wet as he was, to give himself up to his misery.
"I don't want that man for a father!" he cried, over and over again, half tearfully and with set teeth. "I don't want him! He isn't a bit like anybody I could love! Oh, how I wish I had never set eyes on him!"
"It is a great shock to Jack, and to all of us," was Mrs. Ruthven's comment, after the lad was gone.
"My reception here has been a great shock to me," said the doctor bluntly. "My own son runs away from me."
"He had some trouble with you a couple of weeks ago."
"Pooh, that was nothing! I had almost forgotten it."
"Jack does not forget such things easily. Moreover, he is slow to make friends with anybody."
"He doesn't know the chances he is throwing away. Were it not that he is my son, and my heart goes out toward him, I would never bother him."